English A level

A 2007 essay I wrote, with the challenge being to adopt the style of another writer. I went Hemingway.

I bring you "Terminal Diagnosis"

The couple closed the door to the consultant’s office behind them as they stepped out into the corridor.  She settled her bag on her shoulder, and adjusted the coat she was carrying over her arm.  They paused briefly, standing outside the office.  She looked up at him.

“We should eat,” she said.

He stood, looking down at her.

“It’s lunch time, we could eat here, in the hospital Plaza,” she said.

The man nodded.

They began to walk down the wide, utilitarian corridor together, holding hands.  At the end of the corridor, she gave a perfunctory glance at the overhead signs, and together they turned right, no words exchanged.  They stopped at the metal doors of a lift, and she pressed the call button.  The lift arrived and doors opened onto the empty place.  They stepped in, hands disengaged as they turned to face the doors.  She pressed the 0 button and they descended to the ground floor.

As they left the lift, they held hands once again to walk along the wide corridor, passing other patients and nurses walking in pairs.

The hospital canteen was not busy when they arrived; there were four empty tables, and three people at the self service counter.  She took a tray and joined the queue.  He followed behind, one hand in his jeans pocket.  Sandwiches were displayed in a glass counter, which she leaned towards, lifted the lid, reached in and picked up a packet.

“What is there?” he said.

She scanned the labels.

“Well, you’d probably have ham salad or cheese and pickle,” she said, “do you want the cheese?”

“Aye, that’ll do,” he said.

She put the second packet onto the tray and moved along the counter.

“Can I ‘elp yer?” said the woman behind the counter.

“Could I have a tea and a coffee please?  The coffee black,”

The serving woman poured the tea and coffee into mugs and placed them on the counter. 

“Thank you.” she said

The young woman put the mugs onto the tray, and carried them over to the till.

“That’ll be six pounds forty please,” said the cashier.

The man took his wallet out of his pocket

“I’ll get this,” he said.

He handed the cashier a note and she passed him his change

“Thanks”.

The woman walked with the tray to an empty table, put down the tray and stood waiting for the man to join her.

“This’ll do.” She said.

She hung her bag and coat over the back of the chair and sat down, the man sat down opposite.

Methodically, she took the food and drinks off the tray, placing the coffee on the table in front of him, the tea near to her, and a sandwich in front of each of them.  Looking down at the table, she began to open her packet.  He too looked down and started to open his sandwich.  After taking a bite, she looked across at him, whilst reaching for her mug.  He looked back at her.

“Well, that’s that then,” he said.

She looked down and picked up her sandwich.  He continued to look at her, chewing.  She looked up at him, biting into her sandwich.  They continued to eat in silence.

“What do we do now?” she said.

“Shouldn’t you be getting back to work?”

“I think they’ll understand,” she said, “I’m not sure I want to go in now.”

“You shouldn’t miss any more time.”

She sipped her tea, he looked at the table.  An older couple walked by.  As they walked past, they briefly looked down at the younger couple sitting at the table, eyes resting momentarily on the angry red question mark shaped scar running down the man’s head.

“How are we going to tell your mum?” she asked

“I don’t want her to know,” he said.

“but,” she said “oh.

“Are we going to have cake?”

“I’m not really hungry,” he said

“Me neither.”

She pushed back her chair, stood up, put on her coat and picked up her bag.  He too stood up, they held hands and walked across the café to the exit.  She took the car park ticket from her pocket, put it in the machine and paid the standard fee in exact coins. 

“Are you going to put your bob-hat on?”

“It’s cold out”.

He covered his head with a woolly hat, his appearance made ordinary as the still raw incision marks on his bare scalp were hidden from view.  She smiled up at him. 

They stepped outside through the automatic glass doors, and then walked across the car park together, holding hands.  As they stopped at their car, she took the keys from her pocket and they released hands.  She unlocked the passenger door and turned to her husband.  She put her arms around his waist, and leaned in towards him.  He put his arms around her shoulders and they hugged, bodies held close.  She leaned her head back angling her face upwards towards his and they kissed on the lips.

She withdrew, moving backwards a short step, and their arms returned to their sides.  As she walked around the car to the driver’s door, he opened the passenger door and got in.  She got in the car, shut the door, and put the key in the ignition.

“Let’s go home” she said.

Happy New Year

I've made a declaration of New Year.

2016 has not been a great year.

This year I ended up seeking help from a local clinic for a series of hormone related tosh.  Massive anxiety attacks, downward spiralling mood in an uncanny inverse relationship to upward spiralling weight.  Just as I'd made my first appointment to get some professional help to sort my shit out, I found myself in the back of an ambulance being taken into hospital.

I didn't enjoy the hospital experience.  I discovered that morphine and I are not going to have a flourishing relationship.  Ever.  Smallest possible dose sends my blood pressure gurgling down a plughole.  It was a quite weird up and down thing going on as the ambulance men and docs attempted pain management.  After scans and much prodding, the small intestine blockage I seemed to have acquired actually went away of its own accord at 2am leaving me in an NHS nightie with the clothes I'd cycled from work in and my phone and a charger and a nil by mouth notice.

I took a week off to get my head together and bang, work crisis of the year No 1 hit the inbox.  All hands on deck to get the information gathered to clear the name of a rider who had done nothing wrong.  It was emotionally intense, a talented guy who deserved better.

Then we bounced along, tried to go on holiday which didn't entirely go according to plan, coming home a week early only to have the camper van written off on our own street.  Four months before the insurance was 100% settled and the van is still in the bodyshop.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, other holidays failed to come off as work ricocheted from the nicely termed pseudo crisis efforts of the gutter press.

So now, I have declared today New Year's Day.  22nd November is the new New Year.  Because I don't have to wait until 1st January to make things better.  My New Year's resolution to take me through the next 45 days is to try to do something active every day, 20 mins run being the minimum standard.  So, Happy 2017, believe it or not, it's already here!

Little Britain

And now Little America.  A land for the small minded bigots you might suggest.


https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/10/misogyny-us-election-voters

The good old guardian gave a nice couple of lines on the American Dream.

"The first black American president will now be succeeded by a man endorsed by the Ku Klux Klan. This, according to Trump and his supporters, male and female, is what the American dream actually looks like."

Made me think.  There's been a lot of similarities in the Brexit vote and the Trump presidency win aftermath.  Young people voted differently to old people, and young people didn't get their way, despite it being their future which is being messed with.  Forgive me for noting that in the US this is only a decision for four years not like UK where Brexit, like a dog, is for life not just for Christmas.  

There are already those who don't understand the despair of the people who wanted a different outcome.  Saying things like, we're all in this together, you've just got to roll up your sleeves and get on with it. We've got work to do.  Kind of meaningless for those of us with a 9 to 5 office job and no ability to affect anything bigger, not even, it seems through voting and democracy.  In the UK Europeans are afraid of what their future holds. In America the muslims, the homosexuals and the coloured are afraid of what their future holds. And with good cause, I'm thinking.

Let's make America / Britain great again, eh?

You know what would make for greatness for me?  The feeling of community - people who look out for other people, who help people, who notice when things need a bit of support and realise when they have the capacity to provide that help.  People caring about each other, extended family style.  Greatness isn't about striving for your own personal gain, it's about surviving and importantly making sure that others survive too.

Forty Eight

It turns out I like being 48.  Forty six as an age was of slight concern.  It was a matter of waiting to see if I made it to forty seven.  After all, husband dying two days before his forty seventh birthday was weighing heavily on my mind.  The weirdness of reaching an age where death is a real thing that happens to normal people.  I didn't think 47 was particularly amazing, no real euphoria about making it that far, just life as usual.  But 48.  Wow.  I like 48.  I am bloody near to 50 years old.  I mean, I can smell it.  I can feel its approach and almost taste it.

But I'm 48 and I never knew it would feel this good.  My body still does stuff, everything I ask of it.  I can mountain bike without damaging myself, do four hours of heavy digging and lifting in the garden the next day and still get up and ride 45 miles the following day.  My body is still working, that's pretty cool, eh?  In fact, no really noticeable slowing up from a decade ago.  Not only will it do all that stuff, but it can run further than it ever could at any point in my 30s.  Pretty neat, I'm thinking.

So I enter the late 40s with a hell yeah kind of approach.  A feeling of freedom and recklessness because I'm not broken yet.

Mrs Williams

Dear Mrs Williams,

I know you think this is not important, in fact, a bit of a joke, but I want to let you know what you did to me. I want you to understand that your thoughtless actions had an impact on someone else's life, that you did something bad.

I know you thought you simply rammed an anonymous white van, and that it was just a thing.  Well, it wasn't.  It was Shaz.

Let me explain, properly, the background, from the start.

My husband, my soulmate, my wonderful, kind, strong, beloved husband was taken from me in 2005, quite suddenly and unexpectedly through a malignant grade 4 brain tumour.  When he died I was lost, broken, destroyed, adrift, no longer really me anymore.  And they gave me a life insurance payout.  How ridiculous does that seem, what is money in relation to the loss of not just his life but my planned life with him.  How can money even relate to such a thing, and what's it for?  I left it sat, untouched for years, it just didn't seem relevant to me.  In 2012, seven years on, I found myself starting to be in a better place, a glimpse of the possibilities of happiness, my head coming out from the clouds a little and my feet beginning to find their place as well as this unwanted new life began to start forming some tendrils of spring again.

So, knowing that Dave would have smiled at my actions I commissioned the sourcing and converting of a VW Transporter into a camper van.  It was custom built for me.  Little details and big details.  Customised.  For me.  The seats are a cheery blue and white leather look, and I love them. I love all the little bits and pieces of my camper van.  And I travelled in that van, to Scotland first off, then all over Europe we went in an extended trip while I took time out of real life and work and all that jazz.  I lived in her, like a tortoise traveling in her shell, that's how I was, moved for a bit then curled up safe and warm in the cocoon which the van became.  She was Shazza, my camper van.

I returned to real life eventually, travelling can't last forever if funds don't.  But the van played a huge part in my life from then.  Everytime I needed peace and quiet, she was the obvious refuge, heading off for a week or for a weekend, alone or with friends.  When I needed time to study and write essays for my Open University degree, I'd go away in Shaz, mix up walking or riding my bike by day then quietly, comfortably and in peace, I'd have a seat in Shaz and open up the books.

She represents so many things for me.  She's my dead husband's legacy.  She's my play thing.  She's my happy place.  She's part of how I go away with friends.  She's my only vehicle, my only way of carrying stuff which can't be walked or biked or trained or bussed.  She's Shaz, she's the way I find inner calm and a gateway to fun and adventure.

You took her away.  You admit that you have had a lot of crashes but you didn't stop to consider that maybe you're not fit to drive.  You said you had blacked out, couldn't remember.  You weren't fit to drive.  But you did drive.  You drove into Shaz, you took her away.  You.  You did that. Nobody else did that.  You drove down the middle of the bloody road, you didn't try to stay on your side, you didn't brake, you didn't steer, you didn't look.   Were you on the phone, reading a text perhaps?  You rammed her, and you wrote her off.  You seem to be proud of your bad driving record.  How many other people have you unthinkingly said "oh it was just a piece of metal" to.  You are not a thoughtful person.  We will not be friends.  You did this.

Teddy Bear

We were talking teddy bears the other day.  The house has some minor bears, but it has two Important Bears.  Those who are the same age as their owner.  Mine, with a hole in its ear, some threadbare other parts, a bit of stitching forming its face missing.  His, with a scarf to cover the mark where Action Man got him with the bayonet.  This is a story I did probe in some detail to establish if, in fact, it had really been Action Man's fault.  This aside, these bears are Important.  My mum has some important bears, a panda approximately 70 years old, and randomly she is also the care taker for her brother (still alive)'s bear, a more commonplace brown number.  Her bears will be fine.  All three of her children understand these are Bears of Weight and Significance.  They will be taken good care of, cherished, respected and never thrown out as long as a generation exists.

What will happen to my bear?  Nobody will realise that Big Ted is Important, that he's been there for me, through my first might have been boyfriend, through Pippy leaving town, through my lonely promotion to junior school separate from the rest of my year. He understood what it was like to have to share a double bed with Lou at the junior school journey.  Nobody wanted to share with Lou, she smelt.  And while I had to pretend to the world at large that it was no big deal, Big Ted knew that it was.  And he was still there for me over three decades on when my husband died and I cried on his shoulder.  I fear that his future after I die is uncertain and it troubles me.  Is there a home for Important Bears?

Tour of Tameside part 3

And there it was, day 3.  The big one.  My main goal, if you will, the half marathon.

I arrived on the start line in not too bad a condition.  I mean, yes, I had three of my toes taped up, and I'd given the foam roller some serious repeat work over the past two days, but all looked well.  As you may have gathered, I am not a runner. This meant that for Saturday morning to dawn with a clean dry running top things were not looking good.  However, I do, of course, have many cycling  jerseys so a lovely delicate green Rapha jersey with a handy rear zip pocket for the van key and that was me sorted.

At the start line, we gathered once again, and hiding away at the back of the group I found myself in the company of two women who, like me, were new to this malarky.  It turned out we all had the same fear - the itinerary for the event was clear, the winners were expected through early, but then to our horror, the timing of the awards ceremony was, for all three of us, earlier than we anticipated finishing.  We compared notes.  I got my thoughts in order, and the outcome was:

Main goal: Finish
Stretch goal: Do it without walking
Believable goal: Do it in under 3 hours
Stretch goal 2: 2 hours 30.

I really wanted to believe in 2 hours 30.

And off we toddled along the Longdendale trail from Hadfield.  Unlike day 1, I was doing no overtaking.  For a while, there were people around me, and at least something else to look at, admiring running shoes, checking out who had headphones, anything really to keep my brain busy.  And then there were myriad flies.  That kept me busy too, in the attempts not to swallow any of the annoying things.  That was a failed attempt by the way.  As the route was mostly a there and back, the next entertaining moment was when you see the elite guys and gals coming back on their return leg.  At least I'd managed 5 miles before the first leaders passed me in the opposite direction.

Got to the half way point, not quite dead.  Then there was the entertainment of counting the runners who I was now passing going the other way. I think I was slightly anxious not to be last.  At about kilometre 13 I realised I was slowing up.  By this time, there was very little entertainment to be had, other than glancing at the watch.  Oh yes, now I've done 12km.  Oh look, my running pace is averaging 6.13 minutes per kilometre.  Ah yes, I've been running for 1 hour etc. etc. etc. Flat and straight is boring.  But at least if you're looking at the numbers there is empirical information about you slowing up.  One thing I'd done differently before this race was cram a gel in my pocket.  I am suspicious of gels.  I'm never entirely sure if my digestive system will cope.  But the numbers tell me that post gel I got back on pace, and all was well.

Padding, padding, padding along.  I've always got a song going in my head, and this time I had my own lyrics to it.  The more you keep running the sooner it'll be over was my refrain.  The final three km were bloody painful but I got over the finish line in a blistering 2 hours 10.  Found a quiet bit of field and lay down panting for quite some time.  Back in the van and the assessment of current injuries.  One very bloody sock revealed a toe - neighbouring toe interface had gone horribly wrong.  My left ankle was trashed, both knees were grinding, my hips were sore, and the muscles down the front of my thighs, oh my, who would have known.  And my back ached, and there was chafing in places I never knew chafing could happen.  That'll be a DNS for day 4 then ...

Tour of Tameside day 2

So, post my best ever 10km time, how was I going to function the next day?  I took stock in the morning.  Foam roller for the IT band as the knee was hinting at a desire to moan.   Taped up one of my toes on my right foot and I was good to go.

Friday night is fell race night.  Or so it would seem in this mysterious world to which I was getting an induction.  A gaggle of people on the start line, some colour coded as in for the long haul, others who were one trick ponies, just there for the fell race. And of course, everyone looked faster than me.

Now, I'm not a fell runner.  As I write this a little bit of me is protesting over whether  I'm any kind of runner at all.  But as a complete novice to this kind of thing, racing, big numbers of people and this mysterious discipline that is fell running, I felt out of my depth.  Other people were in shorts and vests.  I was in 3/4 length pants, a T-shirt and ... get this ... a waterproof.  The skies were black, it looked horrific, and the walker and mountain biker in me refused to go up on a hill without having the wherewithal to look after myself.  A ridiculous thing given the heavily marshalled nature of the event and the short distance.  But that's me, I'm afraid.

I admit I was a bit disappointed at first with this fell run.  The bulk of the early climbing was on road not on anything trail like, but then as we got to Hobson Moor, off road we went.  The off road climb was interesting, in the way that I learned that when I struck out with a fast walk I overtook people running, and held nobody up behind.  And then, we hit the downhill.  A rocky, rutted, single track kind of a descent.  It was kind of glorious, except for the other runners.  I found myself behind a queue of slow movers, and at first, because they were using a gait which looked like running, I did a gentle run.  Then I realised I could walk down and still be on their heels.  Decided that to enjoy it, I was going to need to do some odd little sprint sections whenever the track widened, and that worked surprisingly well and I bounded down like a gazelle.  Or, as in my adrenaline fuelled after race high, I said on twitter, like a force of nature.

That surprised me, my ability to descend rapidly on a technical trail.  I am definitely not a mountain goat by any means, my clumsiness and inability to sort my footwork out seemed to me a given.  Yet, the last few months of running on my own, descending from Chinley Churn down New Allotments in a joyous lolloping style has, it seems, suited me well to descending.  Peak District meets Tameside and the Peak District won, it seems.  That feeling, that glorious happy feeling of running like a child who has an unexpected day off school and runs for the sheer wonder of it, that feeling stays with me. Ah, and there is some kind of photographic evidence.  Me before the race.  I'm the one on the right.

Tour of Tameside part 1

Feeling a need to write.

The Tour of Tameside is a local running event.  It takes place over four days, and each day is from a different location.  The first day is a 10km trail run after work on a Thursday evening, the second a 6 mile (I did not make up the units) fell run Friday evening, the third day a half marathon off road  on Saturday morning and the final day a 7 mile city style run around Hyde on the Sunday.

My friend Glyn, on hearing that I'm aiming at a half marathon in October said something to the effect of "hey, are you doing any of the Tour of Tameside events?  I'm doing the 10km".  Before I knew it, I'd checked it out online and booked on the whole lot.  I think he was taken aback by what he'd started.

Having booked on just ten days before, by way of preparation, the previous weekend I thought I'd better see if I had the wherewithal to run on two consecutive days.    That didn't go too badly.  10km a day seemed do-able.  By way of further preparation I thought I'd better buy some suitable trail shoes. The Tuesday of the week of the event I was the proud owner of new trail shoes.  On the Wednesday I got off the train two stops early and ran home in them.  They seemed fine.

Thursday night I collected my number from a trestle table set up in a local rugby club HQ.  Carefully pinned it on, as per instructions, four pins and made my way to the start line.  Read the instructions, had a moment of total horror as I realised that they were expecting the race winners to finish just 30 minutes in.  That about equals my best ever 5km time.  Then discovered that the award ceremony had potential to take place before I'd finished running. Hmm, I thought, what have I done?

So, made my way to the start line, with the confidence of someone who has never even done a 5km park run but has somehow entered something which includes the word "race".  There they were.  The other runners.  They looked like they knew what they were doing.  Their clothing yelled out, I know what I'm doing, their warm ups betrayed their less than casual approach.  Some of them had their names on their numbers.  Things were not looking good for me.  Very wisely, I aimed for somewhere near to the back of the pack so I didn't get in the way of the fast people.  I didn't warm up.  I am used to spending the first 2km of the run warming up.  There was an announcement and a gun and we shuffled towards the start line, and strava at the ready, off we went.  Having never run in a group before, it was improbably confusing trying to figure out what my normal pace actually was.  Other people upset my rhythm, and as I overtook people, I was worried; had I set off too fast?  I hadn't expected to have to go round anyone after all.  As things went on, we seemed to settle down, by about 4km I found myself staring at the same rear views, admiring the vest top race back of the woman in front with the swishing dark brown ponytail and wondering what the odd harness thing was on the guy in front.  Being an out and back, we were relieved of any running boredom by being able to see the elite guys and gals coming back past us.  Briefly.  Then there was more running, more and more running.  Eventually we had some bounding down through woodland trails, up and down steps, alongside canals and general change of scenery.  Then round a corner was a mahoosive descent and there ahead, the finish line.  Bounded down trying to look like none of it had been any trouble at all, whooshed past the finish line with the nice touch of the announcer welcoming me in by name.  Turned out I'd actually made it through just under the 60 minute mark, and there right on my tail was my friend Glyn.  Go us.

Antonym for Great

No suitable antonym for great exists.  I don't know what to think of Great Britain.  Small minded Britain springs to mind.

A steady theme of those who voted to Leave the UK hears them on interview on TV saying, passionately, often in a trembling voice "I've got my England back".  Often people my age who only knew an England within Europe.  Trying to turn a clock back, return to something you didn't even live through in the first place is incomprehensible to me.

Well, I haven't.  I've lost my England.  My England was a colourful place, it embraced diversity, played with it, relished it, enjoyed it, had a sense of humour about differences and chuckled about change, loved the increase in wild and wonderful foodstuffs, played with the new words we were making part of our language.  Had creativity, made friends, married into diversity.  Loved it.  Loved diversity.  That was my England.  I want my England back.

I don't want a place where racist attacks are returning, where individuals I cannot understand and won't try to understand feel that it's now OK to abuse their fellow citizens because they've not been in the UK for generations.  It's not OK. It's not OK at all, violence, name calling, snearing, verbal abuse, letters, hate mail, internet attitude, none of that is OK, none of that is British.  I am ashamed.  Thoroughly ashamed to have to admit to being British.  This really sucks.

Not European

So, the UK voted to leave Europe.  I feel like a toddler wanting to shout "not fair".  I am 47 years old.  We joined Europe while I actually was a toddler. I've been European all my life and someone I can't shout at has taken that away from me.  I've been robbed, I've been bereaved.  If you told me I could no longer be British, the feelings would be as strong.  I am European, how can people I don't even know make me give that up?

I'm scared. So scared.  By so many things.

I'm scared of my neighbours.  I fear the UK breaking down into a place where racism is out in the open, accepted, tolerated.  I fear for my neighbours as well as being afraid of them, for not everyone around here has Englishness in their blood for ten generations.  Where would it end.

I'm scared because I've contributed to a pension scheme for 27 years now, and it loses money every year.  It went down 5% last year and now, well, thousands more have gone from it. I have just 20 years of a working life to try to build myself into a retirement where I don't have to rely on a state pension which I fully believe will not be adequate to keep a roof over my head.  Because this is my home, this house, and I want to see out my days here, but I could not afford the running costs on a state pension. I guess I'd have to take in lodgers in my 70s.

I'm scared of losing my job.  My much loved team is International.  I don't know how it's going to work, in terms of having foreign workers, I don't know how the budgets are going to cope.  I presume we're funded in sterling and spending in Euros and that's frightening.  How long will I have a job?

I'm scared about the mortgage rate and what could happen to my repayments in a world where employment has suddenly become uncertain.

I'm scared and angry about what we've done to the younger generation.  The day before voting I looked down over our local playing field and saw the kids.  I don't have kids, but I knew I wanted a future for those having a kickabout where they had opportunity.  The chance to work in a wider world, to embrace the global culture which I think is the future, the best place to be everything you want to be.

I worry for my friends who live European lives.  So many living in Europe, so many in loving relationships with people who were, until Friday our fellow Europeans.  What is going to happen to their right to work in Europe, to love in Europe, to bring up their dual nationality children wherever they want to bring them up.  I worry for my European friends living here, contributing, being a part of this amazing, eclectic country which is richer for diversity.

Will the French hate me?  Will I get abuse when I travel overseas.

Our youth may not be able to do what I had the privilege of doing, to take off in a campervan, drive around Europe with an unknown itinerary and an unknown duration, to freely move through Europe.

I hate this, and to tell me to "suck it up", to roll up my sleeves and get on with it.  Well, it's too soon for that. It'll be too soon until we can be offered some certainties over how our future is going to look.

I am one of the sixteen million my local MP seems to be pretending don't exist.  He is delighted that 17000 people in his constituency wanted to leave.  What about the 16,300 who wanted to stay?

I'm terrified.  And yet, usually, I deal well with change.

i-delete

Facebook have an "On this day" app which sometimes makes me smile with fond memories, and often makes me wince.  I don't really like the person I was in 2007, or so it appears.  Almost every post from that era makes me feel  nothing but regret.  Maybe I was the only one who knew what a mess I was or maybe it did come through, post by post, as I was angry, frustrated, drunk or hungover. I'm ashamed of who I was that year, I don't like that person.

I then realised I could make her and all the memories of her disappear.  Click top right of that old 9 year old status, scroll down, press delete.  After a diligent and consistent 365 days of doing that, she'll be gone, expunged, and I won't have to deal with her again.  There's no learning to be had, no benefit from remembering those bad times, they won't serve as a warning or a caution, they just make me feel bad about me.  The delight of delete is fabulous.

Wanna Gag?

I didn't want to gag.  The doctor made me.  So, to cut direct to the conclusion, my endoscopy gave pretty close to an all clear, nothing sinister going on inside these guts.  There's still a test result to come for a bacteria the gastro dude felt was a possibility but there's nothing in the way of polyps or weird stuff happening.

The endoscopy was kind of unpleasant.  Not painful, not particularly horror story material, but unpleasant.  I opted for sedation and the throat spray, one or other of which was meant to deaden my gag reflex.  Not my gag reflex, no sirree, that's live and well and undeterred by such things as mere medication.  It put up a good fight against the tube despite all the breathing and relaxing I was doing in a token gesture kind of a way.  Difficult to focus on those things when your body has other ideas.  And a long liquorice like tube went into me and at some point it came out and I was wheeled into recovery where I could quietly watch my resting heart rate and see it rise when I stressed out about farting.  That's a side effect of them pumping air into your stomach so their camera can have a good look around.  It feels slightly anti social even though you know the other three or four women in the room are presumably having the same issues.

Then there were instructions.  A responsible adult for four hours.  Fella found that horrifying, what, spend four full hours with his girlfriend?  Perish the thought.  Then the alarming don't operate machinery or kitchen appliances.  Wait.  Hold on right there. Not even the kettle?  No, apparently I'm not safe to operate the kettle.  No driving for 24 hours, fine, no worries.  No big decisions. I was glad about the no big decisions.  After we walked around Sainsbury's and then on to Co-op for chorizo (not sold in our dinky Sainsbury's), I wanted to buy ice cream in co-op.  Turned out we'd already bought ice cream in Sainsbury's.  Big decisions would clearly have been a bit of an issue.

And all continues, business as usual.

Mid May

What a curious time of year this has proved to be for me over the years.  Today I saw on facebook the wedding anniversary of two of my friends.  Sixteen years it's been.  I missed their wedding because I wrote off my car and had whiplash.  On the same day as I wrote off the car, I got the keys to my house - the home I shared with Dave from 20th May 2000 until his death in 2005.

Three years later in May 2003 I got married.

Fast Forward to 2012 and I met my current fella 20th May.

And every single year I still send my mother in law flowers for her birthday, always with a twinge of sadness because she lost her son and he can't send her a present, or a card, or visit as he used to, and my meagre offering, a symbol of affection and caring is all I can do.

This year is also proving distressing, firstly for reasons I can't quite put into words relating to an old friend, secondly tomorrow's endoscopy which is quietly concerning me.  It's like a rite of passage into a stage of life where medical procedures begin ...

Perry Many

It seems to me it's not something anything attempts to warn you about, the peri menopause.  Mind you, thinking back, I'm not entirely sure anyone did anything to prepare me for periods or for period pains or for the pre period madness.  Maybe back then a couple of friends talked about their periods, because I knew what was going on at my first "showing" as I believe the polite phrase may be.

But in your thirties / early forties, nobody tells you there's this stage which happens between fertility and non fertility, as it were.  This bit in the middle where things start to change.  So things change and you start to seek an explanation.  You talk to friends about bits and pieces, you read the internet, and eventually, finally, it dawns on you that these body changes aren't your fault, that you're not messing up, that you're not dying of some outlandish illness, and for some of them, there's a chance you can do something about them.  You also realise you could have it a lot worse.  There's a veritable smorgasbord of options you can select for how your perimenopause is going to hit you today or next week.

So, I got a massive bad dose of the jittery hormones and a dose of unwanted body fat as part of the gift aging gave to me.  And decided I could no longer be a passive passenger of my body at this point.  I was going to seek help.  And I sought help.  I put aside my usual conventional approaches and booked in at the Alternative Health clinic.  Wincing a little bit as I did so.  And a month or so later, things are normalising - in the way I want normal to be, not in the way my body had decided for me.  A month of fasted pre breakfast exercise washed down with a prescribed amount of smoothie which is all the food I get until lunch and I have energy back, the want to get out and do something with myself has returned.  My old shape has started to return, my waist has definition and my waistband is not obscured by a somewhat alarming roll of belly fat.  Starflower and Agnus Castus and I seem to have levelled out, mood wise, hell, sometimes I even feel quite smiley!

Still, I wonder why nobody warned me ... 

Roles Reversed

So, I went into hospital, in an ambulance and everything.  Excruciating abdominal pain involving attempts to vomit, attempts not to move a whisker.  Waves of pain that when at their worst made me shiver violently with teeth chattering with what became an almost mesmerising regularity.  Oh here we go again, big pain hit, count to 5 and here comes the shivering.  Apparently I have an interesting reaction to morphine.  My blood pressure decides it just wants out of here, through the floor or anywhere available and it all gets a bit swimmy.

And there was fella, having to deal with seeing me in massive pain and helpless to help. He strokes my head, and at one point I request his hand resting on my belly while both mine are occupied, what with blood pressure cuffs and morphine.

And I think I know what he's going through and I feel bad.  But I don't know if I do know what he's going through.  I hated being helpless when Dave was in the agony of the shingles head, nothing touching the hurt.  And that's what I assumed, so felt bad for fella as well as bad for me. Hell, eventually all I felt was the need for everything to stop.  I wanted unconscious, or I wanted a large knife to rip my own abdomen out.

I resolutely refused all suggestions of one sided pain or start to pain, and it felt really hard to insist that I was lucid and truthful but kept insisting it was a band across the whole.  Good job really or I might have had a random appendix surgery.  It was a blockage of my small intestine.

In the middle of all of this I somehow transfer to fella all responsibility for us.  He's the one who has to talk to the doctors because sometimes I can't talk through the waves of pain, although I try, and sometimes I am completely unaware of what's happening around me, and couldn't possibly repeat a history of what's happened since we first phoned the NHS helpline.  And I have to relinquish something, not entirely control but I need to depend on him to be the one who holds it all together, and I'm not entirely sure he can do it.  That's always been how I've seen my role, the one who competently manages to keep the plates spinning.

And it's OK, it's all OK, I go in on Monday evening and I'm out on Tuesday evening, confused, bewildered, shell shocked and tired, so damned tired.  All the shivering and the loss of a night's sleep has taken its toll.  Wednesday I cry, those relief kind of tears when you actually get the chance to cry after a trying experience.  Perhaps I should have screamed while I was on the trolley in the hospital corridor for what felt like hours, but I was in silent pain mode.  I didn't cry, I didn't scream.  I may have whimpered, perhaps twice.  And attempted to puke a few times, not that it helped.

And somehow on Wednesday I expect to be as right as rain, and oddly I'm not, and trying to be as right as rain is exhausting.  So that's me, learning to recover.  Trying emotionally to come to grips with an ambulance journey and a night in hospital.  It's a first for me.

Pinball Wizard

Did you play pinball in your youth?  I remember the electronic machines.  Stuff happened, lights flashed, paddles flicked, bells sounded, springs compressed and exploded.  Sometimes you'd set your ball free and wouldn't have to lift a finger as it ricocheted around the inside of the machine.  You didn't even need to try to flick the flapper, as it were, it was just everywhere, all at once, out of control, bashing into everything.  Sometimes when I look at facebook I realise I have friends like that, their lives resemble that shiny silver ball, no control as they are lurched from one thing to another, they speed up, slow down, get caught behind a barrier, start to fall, and are heartachingly flicked into a completely different place.  It's not easy watching, not at all, and the powerlessness of not being able to open any kind of trap door or provide any kind of resting cushion for even a short while is uncomfortable.  I don't like watching the unstoppability of it, never knowing if it's an up or a down they will hit next and not able to just grab their shoulders, look into their eyes and try to make the dizziness and disorientation go away.

I'm not sure I could live like that, but I do wonder if from the outside, people believe that I do?

Not meant.

It wasn't meant to be like this.  I sometimes look at people around me and I want to shake my head sadly and say "sorry, it really wasn't meant to be like this, was it?".  It's a curious double standards thing because I wouldn't dream of thinking like that about me, or even saying it to me as some kind of comfort.  It's not very comforting is it?  Doesn't change a thing, doesn't make events which have happened unhappen, and doesn't make them any better.  Doesn't offer a reason, an explanation or anything.  Maybe it's just one of those things that people say?  Or do they.  Do people say "it wasn't meant to be like this". I know people say "everything happens for a reason", and I think that's bollocks too.

It wasn't meant to be like this acknowledges that the fairy tale you built about how life would be has not come true.  It doesn't mean that there was ever a plan created by you or for you or involving a man in the clouds.  The man in the clouds, I suspect, if such a thing existed would have to take full responsibility for the fact that actually, it was meant to be like this.  That's destiny, everything is pre ordained.

Is the inability to say "it wasn't meant to be like this" an admission that there is something pre ordained and it all went rather horribly wrong?  Or in fact, is it a load of tripe because what's meant to be will be, what has happened has, and we break into song with whatever will be will be?

Shutting down

I've been trying hard to shut down.  Not pause, not fast forward, not rewind.  Great terminology which has been given to us by technology.   The latter all remind me of a good old fashioned tape deck, although no doubt they go back further than that, to times before such things were available to anyone who cared to enter Woolworths and shell out.  Shut down, though, belongs to the world of computers.  And frustratingly, when I try, sometimes the screen just hangs, and there I am, in limbo, in a world where the bit of me that's supposedly switched on just isn't functional.

Or maybe it's more like trying to quit reluctant applications. I'd like one or two of them just to go away, temporarily, for here and now, but they sit there like sulking toads, hogging their lily leaves and refusing to duck under water or scurry off into the undergrowth.  Sometimes I swear they poke long curly tongues out at me.

And I'm on holiday, and I can't entirely remember which applications I am trying to force close.  Alt Control Delete.  And also, somehow I can't stop.  There are a lot of hours I can't bear to see empty because that might open up an application I'm somehow not quite ready for.

If I ...

If I turn into that person, that shambling undignified wreck who doesn't love living, who is an embarrassment to myself and my relatives.  If I smell of wee, an I drool and there's no joy to be had from anything.  If I'm reduced to feeding from a tube, cannot walk without help, but importantly, if in all this I lose my faculties, my ability to make decisions or to communicate my needs then don't just let me go, please push me.  Push me down the stairs, or give me leave to find my own route of departure head first down a flight.  Don't let me live like this.

But that's not how it works.  Someone may deteriorate, their quality of life may become eroded, their bodily functions carried out by someone else without their say so, wee in a tube, poo hand balled out, but still, we say, they are themselves, they laugh and talk and react and love, still love coherently and truly, and no, we can't push them downstairs.  It's not how it works.

It's a killer.